Several things about the mortar scene. What got me was that I was having fun. Here these jerks had been killing me every few encounters or so (played on hard and you die quite a bit on it) and finally I was basically untouchable and was slaughtering them in droves using the floating thermal targeting cam. There I was, fully satisfied with my revenge on the 33rd, I might have even laughed when the fuel tank blew sending a wave of burning gas down what I thought was a path full of 33rd reinforcements.

Then I got to walk through what I'd done, see the charred bodies, the ash floating through the air, people that had tried to shield their friends with their own body and failed. It was pretty sobering that I'd been_ happy_ to have been doing this, I felt like the biggest asshole around. Then I got the the civilians.... It took me awhile to come back after that.

My next play through I tried about a dozen times to not use the mortar. You don't even stand a chance. Your cover is partially destructible, you probably don't have a long-range gun, not that you'd have time to aim it as you either get sniped in the head or two-shot by hyper accurate machine gun fire. I think at best I killed five before going down, and you don't get help from the team either.

In the end though I understand it. Forcing you to mortar the place might not be the best literary decision but the other choice had you finding them and maybe talking to them and finding out about the 33rd, thus changing the entire direction of the game. Or maybe they'd have fled and you wouldn't get to talk. Either way, it'd have removed a major turning point in the game and in the protagonists development along with the first time a game had seriously impacted me and made me think about what I'd done. What a monster I'd gleefully become all because I'd been handed a bit of power.